Thyristor switches are widely used in areas such as power integrated circuits, power supplies, high-power lasers, and high power microwave systems. Presently, commercial manufacture of thyristor switches has been based strictly on silicon technology. However, there has been some research directed toward gallium arsenide GaAs thyristors. This research is described in articles such as, "Electrically Controllable Three-electrode High-voltage Subnanosecond Switches Made From a Multilayer GaAs-AlGaAs Heterostructure," by Alferov et al, Sov. Tech. Phys. Lett., Vol. 12, No. 11, pgs. 529-530, 1986. The authors of this article report epitaxial grown AlGaAs/GaAs thyristors with hold off voltages up to 1000 V, and di/dt values of 5.times.10.sup.10 A/s with peak current close to 10 A.
GaAs based thyristors for other applications have been described in U.S. Patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,027,322 issued May 31, 1977 to Heinecke and entitled, "Zero point switching thyristor having an isolated emitter region," and U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,357 issued May 9, 1989 to Kasahara and entitled, "PNPN thyristor."